Promoting Forest – Based Eduprises

Forests have been conveniently able to conserve and preserve
carbon. These roles and abilities of the stands of trees as
carbon sink have helped to mitigate climate change. Nowadays,
deforestation and forest degradation have threatened forests,
notably tropical forests so that most NGOs have developed and
evolved into fast programs addressing these problems.

IGaF is an NGO - based co-organization platform which has
massively initiated massively environmental movements. An early
initiative which has been the tremendous action by IGaF in
responding to the above problems is the Forest – Based Eduprises.

This initiative was developed in February 2013 by IGaF standing
members. The objectives of this initiative are to promote forest
– based eduprises to children, youth and local communities and to
educate them with the benefits of managing forests to the source
of enterprises.

The kinds of enterprises which are promoted and educated to
children, youth and local community are agrosilvopasture and
biocomposite. In this program, there are three targeted objects
which are children, youth and local communities. Why did we focus
on these people?

1. Children: children are the indispensable human beings who will
be the major actors on changing the environment of being better.
From children, the message will be easily embedded in their
thoughts and will be spread to the other children.

2. Youth: As we know, the future of the country depends on youth.
Youth will be committed as agents of change. So the environmental
education program will be in the hands of these agents if they
are willing.

3. Local communities: Local communities are the objects of the
program because from these people, the forest will be maintained
well which is in accordance with their local indigenous.

The program has engaged at least 63 students from the elementary
school of SD N Jambu 2. On the other hand, it also has implicated
local communities that most of them work as woodworkers, heading
to the local indigenous areas of Jepara’s wood carving.

Here we will elaborate the agenda drafted like the proposal. The
agenda was classified into two sections. Of these sections, the
most memorable action is by embracing elementary students to be
involved in rehabilitating the abandoned lands. The children got
together to be in dirty and muddy lands to plant some seedlings.
With this hope, they harbored a will to conserve the environment
and forest of being sustainable. Other activities are promoting
the management of wood waste. The wood wastes were converted
usefully into practical goods for furniture. It will be helpful
in the future to mitigate the deforestation through using the
alternative of wood such as agricultural wastes to substitute
solid woods.